Little, Brad (1954- )

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    Western Governors Give Bipartisanship a Try. At Least for a Few Days.

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    The bipartisan boat ride on Lake Tahoe was scrapped because of scheduling issues. At least three of the participating Republicans were suing the administration of one of the Democrats.At the opening reception, Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, a conservative in cowboy boots, turned to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a liberal in sunglasses and a ball cap, and joked, “You and I shouldn’t be seen together.”Not everybody laughed.As the Western Governors’ Association marked its 40th anniversary this week in Olympic Valley, Calif., the organization did its best to maintain a tradition that has long been its hallmark: the increasingly lost art of governing across party lines.Under sunny skies and a snowcapped Sierra Nevada, experts from the private sector to members of the Biden administration presented on disaster management, opioids and carbon capture. Aides rushed between meeting rooms. Eight governors appeared on a panel examining the organization’s longstanding culture of consensus — but seven of them were no longer in office.“We used to have this bumper sticker — ‘Bipartisanship Happens,’” Steve Bullock, the former Democratic governor of Montana, said. “But bipartisanship doesn’t just happen. It takes work.”Mr. Newsom welcomed the 300 or so attendees to the meeting, but he did not stay for the full conference.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses

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      Party officials across the country have sought to erect more barriers for young voters, who tilt heavily Democratic, after several cycles in which their turnout surged.Alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students.In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly this month to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification.But so far this year, the new Idaho law is one of few successes for Republicans targeting young voters.Attempts to cordon off out-of-state students from voting in their campus towns or to roll back preregistration for teenagers have failed in New Hampshire and Virginia. Even in Texas, where 2019 legislation shuttered early voting sites on many college campuses, a new proposal that would eliminate all college polling places seems to have an uncertain future.“When these ideas are first floated, people are aghast,” said Chad Dunn, the co-founder and legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. But he cautioned that the lawmakers who sponsor such bills tend to bring them back over and over again.“Then, six, eight, 10 years later, these terrible ideas become law,” he said.Turnout in recent cycles has surged for young voters, who were energized by issues like abortion, climate change and the Trump presidency.They voted in rising numbers during the midterms last year in Kansas and Michigan, which both had referendums about abortion. And college students, who had long paid little attention to elections, emerged as a crucial voting bloc in the 2018 midterms.But even with such gains, Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program for the Brennan Center for Justice, said there was still progress to be made.“Their turnout is still far outpaced by their older counterparts,” Mr. Morales-Doyle said.Now, with the 2024 presidential election underway, the battle over young voters has heightened significance.Between the 2018 and 2022 elections in Idaho, registration jumped 66 percent among 18- and 19-year-old voters, the largest increase in the nation, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. The nonpartisan research organization, based at Tufts University, focuses on youth civic engagement.Gov. Brad Little of Idaho gave his approval to a law that bans student ID cards as a form of voter identification.Kyle Green/Associated PressOut of 17 states that generally require voter ID, Idaho will join Texas and only four others — North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee — that do not accept any student IDs, according to the Voting Rights Lab, a group that tracks legislation.Arizona and Wisconsin have rigid rules on student IDs that colleges and universities have struggled to meet, though some Wisconsin schools have been successful.Proponents of such restrictions often say they are needed to prevent voter fraud, even though instances of fraud are rare. Two lawsuits were filed in state and federal court shortly after Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, signed the student ID prohibition into law on March 15. “The facts aren’t particularly persuasive if you’re just trying to get through all of these voter suppression bills,” Betsy McBride, the president of the League of Women Voters of Idaho, one of the plaintiffs in the state lawsuit, said before the bill’s signing.A fight over out-of-state students in New HampshireIn New Hampshire, which has one of the highest percentages in the nation of college students from out of state, G.O.P. lawmakers proposed a bill this year that would have barred voting access for those students, but it died in committee after failing to muster a single vote.Nearly 59 percent of students at traditional colleges in New Hampshire came from out of state in 2020, according to the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts.The University of New Hampshire had opposed the legislation, while students and other critics had raised questions about its constitutionality.The bill, which would have required students to show their in-state tuition statements when registering to vote, would have even hampered New Hampshire residents attending private schools like Dartmouth College, which doesn’t have an in-state rate, said McKenzie St. Germain, the campaign director for the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, a nonpartisan voting rights group.Sandra Panek, one of the sponsors of the bill that died, said she would like to bring it back if she can get bipartisan support. “We want to encourage our young people to vote,” said Ms. Panek, who regularly tweets about election conspiracy theories. But, she added, elections should be reflective of “those who reside in the New Hampshire towns and who ultimately bear the consequences of the election results.”A Texas ban on campus polling places has made little headwayIn Texas, the Republican lawmaker who introduced the bill to eliminate all polling places on college campuses this year, Carrie Isaac, cited safety concerns and worries about political violence.Voting advocates see a different motive.“This is just the latest in a long line of attacks on young people’s right to vote in Texas,” said Claudia Yoli Ferla, the executive director of MOVE Texas Action Fund, a nonpartisan group that seeks to empower younger voters.Students at the University of Texas at Austin lined up to cast their ballots on campus during the 2020 primary. A new proposal would eliminate all college polling places in the state.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesMs. Isaac has also introduced similar legislation to eliminate polling places at primary and secondary schools. In an interview, she mentioned the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers — an attack that was not connected to voting.“Emotions run very high,” Ms. Isaac said. “Poll workers have complained about increased threats to their lives. It’s just not conducive, I believe, to being around children of all ages.”The legislation has been referred to the House Elections Committee, but has yet to receive a hearing in the Legislature. Voting rights experts have expressed skepticism that the bill — one of dozens related to voting introduced for this session — would advance.G.O.P. voting restrictions flounder in other statesIn Virginia, one Republican failed in her effort to repeal a state law that lets teenagers register to vote starting at age 16 if they will turn 18 in time for a general election. Part of a broader package of proposed election restrictions, the bill had no traction in the G.O.P.-controlled House, where it died this year in committee after no discussion.And in Wyoming, concerns about making voting harder on older people appears to have inadvertently helped younger voters. A G.O.P. bill that would have banned most college IDs from being used as voter identification was narrowly defeated in the state House because it also would have banned Medicare and Medicaid insurance cards as proof of identity at the polls, a provision that Republican lawmakers worried could be onerous for older people.“In my mind, all we’re doing is kind of hurting students and old people,” Dan Zwonitzer, a Republican lawmaker who voted against the bill, said during a House debate in February.But some barriers are already in placeGeorgia has accepted student IDs only from public colleges and universities since 2006, so students at private institutions, including several historically Black colleges and universities, must use another form of identification.Georgia has accepted student IDs only from public colleges and universities since 2006, a rule that means students at private institutions, like several historically Black colleges and universities, must use another form of identification. Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIn Ohio, which has for years not accepted student IDs for voting, Republicans in January approved a broader photo ID requirement that also bars students from using university account statements or utility bills for voting purposes, as they had in the past.The Idaho bill will take effect in January. Scott Herndon and Tina Lambert, the bill’s sponsors in the Senate and the House, did not respond to requests for comment, but Mr. Herndon said during a Feb. 24 session that student identification cards had lower vetting standards than those issued by the government.“It isn’t about voter fraud,” he said. “It’s just making sure that the people who show up to vote are who they say they are.”Republicans contended that nearly 99 percent of Idahoans had used their driver’s licenses to vote, but the bill’s opponents pointed out that not all students have driver’s licenses or passports — and that there is a cost associated with both.Mae Roos, a senior at Borah High School in Boise, testified against the bill at a Feb. 10 hearing.“When we’re taught from the very beginning, when we first start trying to participate, that voting is an expensive process, an arduous process, a process rife with barriers, we become disillusioned with that great dream of our democracy,” Ms. Roos said. “We start to believe that our voices are not valued.” More

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      America’s Doug Mastriano Problem

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      If the Ohio Senate primary two weeks ago provided some clarity about the ideological divisions in the Republican Party, Tuesday’s primaries often seemed more like a showcase for the distinctive personalities that populate a Trumpified G.O.P.The Pennsylvania Senate race gave us an especially vivid mix: As of this writing, the Celebrity Doctor and the Hedge Fund Guy Pretending to Be a MAGA True Believer may be headed for a recount, after the Would-Be Media Personality With the Inspiring Back Story and the Unfortunate Twitter Feed faded back into the pack. In the governor’s race, Republican voters chose to nominate Doug Mastriano, a.k.a. the QAnon Dad. In North Carolina, they ended — for now — the political career of Representative Madison Cawthorn, the Obviously Suffering Grifter.On substance, as opposed to personality, though, the night’s stakes were relatively simple: Can Republicans prevent their party from becoming the party of constitutional crisis, with leaders tacitly committed to turning the next close presidential election into a legal-judicial-political train wreck?This is a distinctive version of a familiar political problem. Whenever a destabilizing populist rebellion is unleashed inside a democratic polity, there are generally two ways to bring back stability without some kind of crisis or rupture in the system.Sometimes the revolt can be quarantined within a minority coalition and defeated by a majority. This was the destiny, for instance, of William Jennings Bryan’s 1890s prairie-populist rebellion, which took over the Democratic Party but went down to multiple presidential defeats at the hands of the more establishmentarian Republicans. You can see a similar pattern, for now, in French politics, where the populism of Marine Le Pen keeps getting isolated and defeated by the widely disliked but grudgingly tolerated centrism of Emmanuel Macron.In the alternative path to stability, the party being reshaped by populism finds leaders who can absorb its energies, channel its grievances and claim its mantle — but also defeat or suppress its most extreme manifestations. This was arguably the path of New Deal liberalism in its relationship to Depression-era populism and radicalism: In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt was able to sustain support from voters who were also drawn to more demagogic characters, from Huey Long to Charles Coughlin. Two generations later, it was the path of Reaganite conservatism in its relationship to both George Wallace’s populism and the Goldwaterite New Right.The problem for America today is that neither stabilizing strategy is going particularly well. Part of the Never Trump movement has aspired to a Macron-style strategy, preaching establishment unity behind the Democratic Party. But the Democrats haven’t cooperated: They conspicuously failed to contain and defeat Trumpism in 2016, and there is no sign that the Biden-era variation on the party is equipped to hold on to the majority it won in 2020.Meanwhile, the Republican Party at the moment does have a provisional model for channeling but also restraining populism. Essentially it involves leaning into culture-war controversy and rhetorical pugilism to a degree that provokes constant liberal outrage and using that outrage to reassure populist voters that you’re on their side and they don’t need to throw you over for a conspiracy theorist or Jan. 6 marcher.This is the model, in different styles and contexts, of Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis. In Tuesday’s primaries it worked for Idaho’s conservative incumbent governor, Brad Little, who easily defeated his own lieutenant governor’s much-further-right campaign. Next week the same approach seems likely to help Brian Kemp defeat David Perdue for the governor’s nomination in Georgia. And it offers the party’s only chance, most likely via a DeSantis candidacy, to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.Unfortunately this model works best when you have a trusted figure, a known quantity, delivering the “I’ll be your warrior, I’ll defeat the left” message. The Cawthorn race, in which the toxic congressman was unseated by a member of the North Carolina State Senate, shows that this figure doesn’t have to be an incumbent to succeed, especially if other statewide leaders provide unified support. But if you have neither unity nor a figure with statewide prominence or incumbency as your champion — no Kemp, no Little — then you can get results like Mastriano’s victory last night in Pennsylvania: a Republican nominee for governor who cannot be trusted to carry out his constitutional duties should the presidential election be close in 2024.So now the obligation returns to the Democrats. Mastriano certainly deserves to lose the general election, and probably he will. But throughout the whole Trumpian experience, the Democratic Party has consistently failed its own tests of responsibility: It has talked constantly about the threat to democracy while moving leftward to a degree that makes it difficult to impossible to hold the center, and it has repeatedly cheered on unfit Republican candidates on the theory that they will be easier to beat.This happened conspicuously with Trump himself, and more unforgivably it happened again with Mastriano: Pennsylvania Democrats sent out mailers boosting his candidacy and ran a big ad buy, more than twice Mastriano’s own TV spending, calling him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — an “attack” line perfectly scripted to improve his primary support.Now they have him, as they had Trump in 2016. We’ll see if they can make the story end differently this time.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Tuesday’s Primaries, Who Won, Who Lost and What Races Haven’t Been Called Yet

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      The marquee election on Tuesday evening, the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, is going down to the wire, but consequential races were decided, setting up general election matchups for the fall.Here is a rundown of the winners and losers in some of the most important contests:The Mehmet Oz, Dave McCormick and Kathy Barnette race in Pennsylvania is too close to call, despite Trump’s endorsement.The high-spending Republican Senate race in Pennsylvania, between Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity television physician, and Dave McCormick, the wealthy leader of a hedge fund, is nail-bitingly close. Neither candidate conceded, and an official recount is likely.Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick are rich, resided in other states for years, and spent millions attacking one another. Though former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Dr. Oz, the race was extremely tight, with thousands of mail-in ballots to be counted starting Wednesday.Another candidate, the author and 2020 election denier Kathy Barnette, surged to an unexpectedly strong third-place showing, in part by casting herself as the more authentic MAGA candidate. Ms. Barnette, who publicly espoused homophobic and anti-Muslim views for years, also benefited by a late advertising blitz from the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth.Doug Mastriano, an election denier, won the Republican primary election for governor in Pennsylvania.Doug Mastriano, a retired colonel and state senator who has propagated myriad false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, won the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor.He defeated a crowded field of challengers and was endorsed just a few days ago by Mr. Trump. He will face Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania who emerged unopposed from the Democratic primary for governor.Mr. Shapiro’s victory lap on Tuesday was cut short. He announced earlier that day that he had tested positive for the coronavirus with mild symptoms and was isolating.With Mr. Mastriano’s victory, Republicans will now try to win a battleground state with a central figure in trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.John Fetterman got a pacemaker hours before winning the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania.John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, had a stroke on Friday and a pacemaker put in on Tuesday, which kept him off the campaign trail in the waning days of the race.In November, he will try to help Democrats pick up a key Senate seat that is being vacated by Republican Patrick J. Toomey, a fiscal conservative who occasionally broke with his party.Gisele Barreto Fetterman speaking at the watch party for her husband, John Fetterman, after he won the Democratic Senate primary.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Fetterman dominated the race, wearing a uniform of sweatshirts and shorts while tapping into voters’ frustration with Washington. In the primary, he defeated Representative Conor Lamb, a moderate some thought could appeal to white, blue-collar workers the party has been losing for years, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a young state legislator and rising star in the party who got married just over two months ago.Ted Budd, anointed by Trump, won North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary in a runaway victory.Representative Ted Budd, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump and the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth, won the Republican nomination for Senate. Mr. Budd, who skipped all four debates in the race, defeated nine other candidates, including Pat McCrory, a former governor, and former Representative Mark Walker.Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court and the first Black woman to have served in that role, will face Mr. Budd after cruising to victory in the Democratic primary for Senate. The outcome never appeared to be in doubt, with Democrats clearing the field of serious challengers for Ms. Beasley, who would become North Carolina’s first Black senator if elected.Republicans are done with Madison CawthornCrumbling under the weight of repeated scandals and blunders, Representative Madison Cawthorn was ousted on Tuesday by Republican primary voters in western North Carolina, a stinging rejection of the Trump-endorsed candidate.Mr. Cawthorn, 26, lost to Chuck Edwards, a state senator, in a crowded primary in the 11th District that resembled a recall effort for many Republicans, who grew fed up with Mr. Cawthorn’s antics.Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina shortly before conceding his race Tuesday night.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesAt about 10:30 p.m., Mr. Cawthorn conceded the race to Mr. Edwards, who had gained the support of many prominent Republicans in North Carolina, including Senator Thom Tillis.Mr. Cawthorn, who entered Congress as a rising star in 2020, was besieged by scandal, from falsely suggesting that his Republican colleagues routinely throw cocaine-fueled orgies, to being detained at an airport after trying to take a loaded gun through security. Last month, after salacious images of him surfaced online showing him wearing women’s lingerie as part of a cruise ship game, he wrote on Twitter that “digging stuff up from my early 20s to smear me is pathetic.”A 26-year-old political novice won a House primary in North Carolina with Trump’s helpBo Hines, a 26-year-old political novice who enthralled Mr. Trump, drawing inevitable comparisons to another North Carolinian — Mr. Cawthorn — catapulted to a win in the Republican primary for a House seat outside Raleigh.Mr. Hines, a onetime football phenom who was an All-American at North Carolina State University before transferring to Yale, topped seven other candidates in the primary in the 13th District.His victory is perhaps the most audacious example of Mr. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party, with the former president endorsing Mr. Hines in March in the newly drawn tossup district. Mr. Hines was also backed by the Club for Growth, the influential anti-tax group.Mr. Hines will face Wiley Nickel, a two-term state senator and criminal defense lawyer who did advance work for President Barack Obama. He positioned himself as a progressive who can work with people on both sides of the aisle.Idaho’s Republican governor stamped out a Trump insurgent: the lieutenant governorGov. Brad Little of Idaho weathered a Republican primary challenge by Janice McGeachin, the lieutenant governor, who had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and made headlines for defying Mr. Little’s pandemic orders.Ms. McGeachin had sought to win over ultraconservatives in the deep-red state that Mr. Trump overwhelmingly carried in 2016 and 2020. She had played up how she had issued a mutinous but short-lived ban on coronavirus mask mandates when Mr. Little had briefly left the state.But Ms. McGeachin appeared to muster less than 30 percent of the vote in Idaho, which holds separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor — the genesis of the strained pairing.An establishment Democrat thwarted a far-left rival running for the House in KentuckyIn an open-seat race in Kentucky’s only blue House district, Democrats favored an establishment candidate in Tuesday’s primary over a rival state lawmaker who ran on the far left and has been a vocal leader of the police accountability movement in Louisville.The party favorite, Morgan McGarvey, the Democratic leader in the State Senate, defeated Attica Scott, a state representative, in the Third District. The two had been vying to succeed to Representative John Yarmuth, who was first elected in 2006 and is retiring. The chairman of the House Budget Committee, Mr. Yarmuth is the lone Democrat from Kentucky in Congress. More

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      A Fracture in Idaho’s G.O.P. as the Far Right Seeks Control

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      Ahead of a primary vote, traditional Republicans are raising alarm about the future of the party, warning about the growing strength of militia members, racists and the John Birch Society.BONNERS FERRY, Idaho — At a school gymnasium in northern Idaho, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin regaled a crowd with stories of her feuds with the current governor, a fellow Republican, including the time when he briefly left the state and she issued a mutinous but short-lived ban on coronavirus mask mandates.Gov. Brad Little had worked in recent years to slash taxes and ban abortion, but for Ms. McGeachin and the hundreds gathered at a candidates’ forum sponsored by the John Birch Society in late March, the governor was at cross purposes with their view of just how conservative Idaho could and should be.They clapped as one candidate advocated “machine guns for everyone” and another called for the state to take control of federal lands. A militia activist, who was once prosecuted for his role in an infamous 2014 standoff with federal agents in Nevada, promised to be a true representative of the people. A local pastor began the meeting with an invocation, asking for God to bless the American Redoubt — a movement to create a refuge anchored in northern Idaho for conservative Christians who are ready to abandon the rest of the country.“We’re losing our state,” said Ms. McGeachin, who is now seeking to take over the governor’s job permanently. “We’re losing our freedoms.”The bitter intraparty contest between Ms. McGeachin and Mr. Little, set to be settled in the state’s primary election on Tuesday, reflects the intensifying split that is pitting Idaho’s conventional pro-gun, anti-abortion, tax-cut conservatives against a growing group of far-right radicals who are agitating to seize control of what is already one of the most conservative corners of the Republican Party in the country.The state has long been a draw for ultraconservatives disillusioned with the liberal drift in other parts of the nation, many of them settling off the grid in the mountains of northern Idaho or among like-minded people in towns like Bonners Ferry. Over the years, the Idaho panhandle has been home to white supremacist groups and people ready to take up arms against the U.S. government. Such groups and their allies have been particularly wary of the changing nature of Idaho’s cities, including the legions of other newcomers responding to a booming job market in Boise.Fearing the growth of the party’s extremist wing, some Republicans are waging a “Take Back Idaho” campaign. In northern Idaho’s Kootenai County, the disputes have led to a formal rift, with two Republican Party factions separately battling to convince voters that they represent the true nature of the party.Todd Engel, second from left, who is running to be a state representative, joined other Republican candidates at a recent forum, Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesBoundary County Middle School in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, where a candidates forum was held for Republicans running in the primary. Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesSimilar debates are playing out across the country, as more moderate Republicans confront challenges from an increasingly powerful segment energized by the continuing influence of former President Donald J. Trump. In Idaho, where Mr. Trump won 64 percent of the vote in 2020, carrying 41 of the state’s 44 counties, many longtime Republicans fear the party’s name, identity and deep conservative values are being commandeered by the state’s fringe elements.“If traditional Republican principles in Idaho want to survive, then the traditional Republicans are going to have to work harder,” said Jack Riggs, a former lieutenant governor who recently joined with other former elected officials to form a separate association, the North Idaho Republicans, to challenge what he sees as a dangerous shift within the existing party leadership in Kootenai County.Understand the Pennsylvania Primary ElectionThe crucial swing state will hold its primary on May 17, with key races for a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship.Hard-Liners Gain: Republican voters appear to be rallying behind far-right candidates in two pivotal races, worrying both parties about what that could mean in November.G.O.P. Senate Race: Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator, is making a surprise late surge against big-spending rivals, Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.Democratic Senate Race: Representative Conor Lamb had all the makings of a front-runner. It hasn’t worked out that way.Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year.Electability Concerns: Starting with Pennsylvania, the coming weeks will offer a window into the mood of Democratic voters who are deeply worried about a challenging midterm campaign environment.Mr. Riggs said the local party has been increasingly taken over by zealots motivated by a desire to limit the influence of government, sometimes at the expense of the traditional Republican goals of promoting business and growth. Many of the new activists, he said, express a willingness to fight the U.S. government, with arms if necessary.One of the growing powers in the region is the John Birch Society, which dominated the far right in the 1960s and 1970s by opposing the civil rights movement and equal rights for women while embracing conspiratorial notions about communist infiltration of the federal government. The group was purged from the conservative movement decades ago but has found a renewed foothold in places like the Idaho panhandle.Ms. McGeachin, the lieutenant governor, has angled to seize the support of that wing of the party. A few weeks before she traveled to the gymnasium event in northern Idaho, she made a video address to the America First Political Action Conference, an event organized by a prominent white nationalist, Nick Fuentes. In an interview, Ms. McGeachin said she had no regrets about doing so.“It’s my job to listen to a broad perspective,” she said.With Mr. Trump’s endorsement, Ms. McGeachin has tried to portray Mr. Little, a third-generation sheep and cattle rancher who has worked to position Idaho as a low-regulation state friendly to businesses and small-government conservatives alike, as unwilling to uphold Idaho’s true values. She cites the governor’s actions during the pandemic as an example.Idaho endured some particularly challenging waves during the coronavirus pandemic that led hospitals to a state of crisis. Overwhelmed facilities in northern Idaho were forced to redirect some patients to neighboring Washington State.Engaged in a bitter intraparty contest, Gov. Brad Little has been trying to tout his conservative credentials. Otto Kitsinger/Associated PressOutside of Coeur d’Alene, on a quiet Friday morning in April.Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesMr. Little angered many in the medical community by refusing to issue a statewide mask mandate and by fighting President Biden’s vaccine mandates in court. But he allowed cities and school districts to issue mask mandates of their own, and that became a point of contention between him and the lieutenant governor. When Mr. Little left the state to participate in a meeting of Republican governors in Tennessee last year, Ms. McGeachin issued an executive order banning mask mandates from government entities in the state, including school districts. Mr. Little reversed the order upon his return.Mr. Little signed some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws, including a provision that prohibits abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy and allows people, including the family members of rapists, to sue the abortion provider. Ms. McGeachin has pushed to go further, calling for a special session to remove exemptions offered in a state law limiting abortions and saying Idaho’s law should be the strictest in the country.The only exemptions in the law are for rape, incest and the life of the motherAnd while Mr. Little has won an endorsement from the National Rifle Association, Ms. McGeachin said she wants to offer incentives to increase production of firearms and ammunition in the state.Mr. Little has sought to tout his other conservative credentials, reminding voters that since he took office in 2019, he has slashed taxes, pursued deregulation and sent National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border.“In Idaho, we cherish our liberty, and we fight for our jobs,” Mr. Little says in a new campaign ad.Idaho is in the midst of dramatic change, recording some of the nation’s fastest population growth in recent years, especially during the pandemic. What the newcomers mean to Idaho politics remains unclear. Depending on whom you ask, they are either importing some of their home state’s liberal values — Californians face particular scorn — or they are bringing new money and energetic grievances that could help drive Idaho further to the right.Republicans already hold supermajorities in the State House and State Senate, and a Democrat has not won a statewide race since 2002. For many of the races on the ballot, the winner of Tuesday’s primary will coast to victory in November.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      In Nebraska, a Trump-Inspired Candidate Cracks Open Divide in the G.O.P.

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      Charles W. Herbster’s bid for governor has set off a bitter fight for power in a state once known for its genteel politics.WAHOO, Neb. — In his run for governor of Nebraska, Charles W. Herbster is doing his best imitation of former President Donald J. Trump.His 90-minute stump speech is packed with complaints about illegal immigrants, stories boasting of his business triumphs, a conspiracy theory connecting China, the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election, and denials of the recent accusations that he’s groped women at political events.He even vows to clean up the “swamp” — but he means Lincoln, the state capital.Like his political role model — and chief backer — Mr. Herbster is proving to be a one-man political wrecking ball. In a state long known for genteel, collaborative politics and, for the last 24 years, one-party rule, Mr. Herbster’s bid has cracked his party into three camps, with Trump supporters, establishment conservatives and business-friendly moderates battling for power. A major donor for years to conservative candidates, Mr. Herbster has been abandoned by longtime political allies and seen his running mate quit his ticket to run for governor herself. The allegations of groping are coming from fellow Republicans.Behind all the drama is a question with resonance far beyond Nebraska. Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Herbster, a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political career, isn’t just the first-time candidate’s top credential — it is his campaign’s entire rationale. Mr. Trump’s name is on Mr. Herbster’s lawn signs, ads and billboards. Mr. Herbster spent Friday stumping across western Nebraska with Steven Moore, the former Trump economic adviser who is a minor Trumpworld celebrity.Mr. Herbster is about to find out if a Trump endorsement alone is enough to win a major Republican primary.“This is a proxy war between the entire Republican establishment in America against President Donald J. Trump,” Mr. Herbster, who campaigns wearing a white cowboy hat and a black vest bearing the logo of his cattle semen business, said in an interview Thursday. “Anybody who the establishment cannot control, they are fearful of.”Mr. Herbster, a longtime Trump ally who was with members of the Trump family during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is running against Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent who is backed by the state’s powerful Ricketts family political machine, and Brett Lindstrom, a youthful state senator who has consolidated support from the party’s remaining moderates and Democrats. More than 8,000 Democrats have switched parties in recent weeks to have some influence on a governor’s contest in an overwhelmingly Republican state. Polling in the final days before Tuesday’s vote shows the race is a three-way dead heat.One of Mr. Herbster’s rivals, Jim Pillen, is backed by Nebraska’s powerful Ricketts family political machine.Walker Pickering for The New York TimesIf Ohio’s recent Senate primary is a guide, the three-way race is working in Mr. Herbster’s favor. The Trump-endorsed candidate for Senate, J.D. Vance, won in a crowded field, taking less than one-third of the vote. (There’s precedent for this in Nebraska. Eight years ago, Gov. Pete Ricketts won the nomination with just over a quarter of the vote.)But Mr. Trump’s touch is looking less golden in other states, particularly in two-way contests for governor. In Georgia, former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Trump’s choice, is lagging far behind Gov. Brian Kemp in polling, leading Mr. Trump to distance himself from that campaign. In Idaho, the former president has backed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin’s challenge against Gov. Brad Little. Ms. McGeachin has struggled to gain traction, and Mr. Trump hasn’t mentioned her since his endorsement in November.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Mr. Trump has thrown his full weight behind Mr. Herbster. On Sunday, he traveled to Nebraska for a rally and appeared on a conference call for Herbster supporters Thursday night, where he cast Mr. Herbster’s rivals as “Republicans in name only.”“Charles was a die-hard MAGA champion,” Mr. Trump said on the call. “When you vote for Charles in the primary, you can give a stinging rebuke to the RINOs and sellouts and the losers who are so poorly representing your state.”Like Mr. Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Mr. Herbster is facing accusations that he has mistreated women and tried to use that fact to gain support. . Two women, including a state senator, publicly accused him of groping them at a political event in 2019. Mr. Herbster has denied the claims and broadcast a TV ad slamming his accuser.“Any allegation that was sent my way is 100 percent totally false,” he said in an interview.He has repeatedly blamed the accusations on Mr. Ricketts, a conservative two-term incumbent who cannot run again because of term limits. The Ricketts family has feuded with Mr. Trump. It spent millions on a last-ditch effort to block Mr. Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016; Trump then said the family better “be careful.”Mr. Ricketts, who tried talking Mr. Trump out of endorsing Mr. Herbster last year, is blunt about his opposition to Mr. Herbster’s bid. He considers the groping allegations disqualifying. Should Mr. Herbster win the Republican nomination, Mr. Ricketts will not endorse him unless he “apologizes to the women he’s done this to,” he said in an interview.Mr. Trump has thrown his full weight behind Mr. Herbster, traveling to Nebraska for a rally on Sunday. He has called the candidate’s rivals “Republicans in name only.”Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesMr. Herbster was facing criticism well before the allegations. Some Republicans bristled at his focus on the sort of divisive cultural issues that don’t typically dominate the political conservation in the state. He campaigns on eliminating sex education in Nebraska’s public schools, cracking down on illegal immigration and curbing China’s influence.In July, his running mate, the former state senator Theresa Thibodeau, quit the ticket and later jumped into the race herself. She said Mr. Herbster had little interest in anything other than trying to emulate Mr. Trump.“If you want to lead the state, you should get your knowledge up on policies that affect our state,” she said on Thursday. “He had no initiative or willingness to do that.”But Mr. Herbster’s message resonated with Trump conservatives, and soon one of his rivals followed suit. Mr. Pillen, a 66-year-old former defensive back for the University of Nebraska’s football team with a grandfatherly demeanor, promised to ban critical race theory at the University of Nebraska and bar transgender women from participating in women’s sports or using women’s bathrooms.“Both the Pillen and the Herbster campaigns have focused on national issues of which they have little control over and they should have been more focused on state issues,” said former Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican who was on Mr. Herbster’s payroll after leaving office. He hasn’t yet made an endorsement.Mr. Pillen downplayed Mr. Trump’s influence in the race.“Nebraskans, we like to figure things out and solve our own problems and think for ourselves,” he said.Mr. Lindstrom, a 41-year-old state senator who also played football for Nebraska, is running a campaign transported from the pre-Trump era. He highlights cooperation with Democrats in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature and, while he said he had no regrets about voting twice for Mr. Trump, said he’d prefer “a new face” in 2024.“The style and brand that’s going on in the Republican Party right now has created a lot of wedges,” Brett Lindstrom said of the Trump era.Walker Pickering for The New York TimesWhile Nebraska’s Republican primaries are typically decided by conservative rural voters who are deeply loyal to Mr. Trump, Mr. Lindstrom, a wonky financial adviser, is betting his campaign on appealing to urban professionals around Omaha — where Mr. Trump lost one of the state’s Electoral College votes to President Biden.“The style and brand that’s going on in the Republican Party right now has created a lot of wedges,” Mr. Lindstrom said. “That isn’t really healthy.”At a Wednesday fund-raiser for Mr. Lindstrom at an upscale Italian restaurant in Omaha, about half of the two dozen people interviewed said they voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. A handful had switched parties to vote for Mr. Lindstrom in the primary.Allen Frederickson, the chief executive of a health care company who became a Republican to vote for Mr. Lindstrom, said electing Mr. Herbster would make it hard to recruit workers to Nebraska’s booming economy, which has the nation’s lowest unemployment rate.“Trumpism would impact our internal and external image as a state,” he said. “We need Nebraska to be an appealing state from a business perspective.”Mr. Herbster makes little effort to appeal outside of the Trump constituency. He begins his speeches, whether to Trump-hatted supporters in Wahoo or bankers in the Omaha suburbs, by offering “greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.”Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Herbster casts doubt on the legitimacy of American elections. In Wahoo, he posited an outlandish theory about the former president’s loss.“This is the truth,” he told supporters. “The pandemic came from China. It was timed perfectly to make sure that they could rig the elections so Mark Zuckerberg could put $400 million into the toll the last four months of the election. Because whether you like it or not, they didn’t want Donald J. Trump to be president for two terms, that’s exactly what happened.”Mr. Herbster has little use for or interest in the traditions of Nebraska politics. He called for ending the state’s system of nonpartisan elections, eliminating the state board of education and said that, on his first day in office, he’d demand the tourism bureau change its quirky slogan: “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.”The question Nebraska’s Republican primary voters will settle on Tuesday is whether any of that matters — or matters more than Mr. Trump’s stamp of approval.“It’s everything,” said former Representative Lee Terry of Omaha, a Herbster supporter. “There’s a lot of Trump people in Nebraska.” More